Ratty Petals
by wouldtheywriteasongforyou
Summary: "But I want to become normal, Petunia. I want to be a Muggle for you." / in which Peter tries to save a sinking (relation)ship. November 1981. A distorted AU.


**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer: Knock, knock. Who's there?**

Written mainly for the HPFC 24 Hour Pairing Challenge "Peter/Petunia" with a dash of Star Light Star Bright Challenge "Black Hole" (destruction/obsession); Your Favourite Hogwarts House Bootcamp [GRYFFINDOR] "35. Traitor"; Star Challenge "Dubhe"

24 hr time constraint made this one-shot kind of . . . odd. Or maybe it was the pairing. I don't know. This just kind of happened.

29 January 2014. Word Count: 2,056

**"I wouldn't go out with you if it was a choice between you and a giant squid!"**

* * *

**Ratty Petals  
**

[-]

A knock on the front door startled Petunia almost-Dursley out of her wedding planning. She flipped a glossy page in her bridal magazine and yelled: "Mum! Someone's at the door!"

Her mother responded from the kitchen, "You're not helpless, Tuney. Greet them yourself."

Petunia grumbled at the interruption. Didn't her mother realise how time-consuming it was to pick out a colour scheme? Her brain was going to explode into a bunch of Skittles if she didn't stop staring at the colour wheel soon, but that wasn't the point. "You wouldn't make _Lily_ get up to answer the door," she griped as she set her magazine down and got up from the living room couch.

"What was that? You know I don't like it when you mumble."

"Nothing, Mother," Petunia said underneath her breath. She stomped the ten paces over to the front door – a feat that only took her three seconds at most – and yanked the wretched thing open to stop the obnoxious noise of someone pounding on the door. She studied her nails and said in a bored tone: "May I help you." It wasn't spoken as a question because Petunia did not want the solicitor to feel very welcome.

"Hello, sweetie."

Petunia nearly collapsed when she heard that voice (he had _sworn_ he would never speak to her again) and her gaze flew from her French-manicured nails to his berry blue eyes.

"Y-you're b-b-back," she breathed out and promptly shut the door in his face.

Immediately, the knocking began again.

"Who was it, Petunia?" her mother asked curiously, appearing in the entry hall and glancing at the front door.

"Nobody," Petunia snapped back a little too quickly to seem plausible.

Her mother arched an eyebrow in disbelief. "All right," she said slowly. It seemed as if she would drop the subject then, but Petunia didn't get her nosiness from her father. Mrs Evans lowered her voice and murmured, "You and Vernon aren't having issues at the moment, are you?"

"Mum!" Petunia exclaimed, aghast that her mother would dare suggest such a scandalous thing. Petunia loved Vernon and he loved her equally back, thank you very much. Nothing could make her change her feelings towards him.

"I'll just . . . be leaving, then," her mother said. "Answer the door, will you?"

Petunia let out a gusty sigh as he mother left the entry hall. She regarded the door with contempt. The ship had sailed a long time ago for her and the man on the other side, but he was her kryptonite. Despite her best intentions, she found herself drawn to him like a moth to a flame. He burned brighter than a dying star and was too volatile and dangerous for her to ignore. With an air of reluctance, she turned the doorknob and pulled the door open.

"Hello again, sweetie."

"Why are you here." She found herself subconsciously reverting to a speech pattern she had adopted years ago to satisfy one of his many demands: he had once insisted that she speak in a flat unimpressed tone lest she sounded like a rodent squeaking with her high-pitched voice.

He smiled but it didn't quite reach the storm clouds in his sky-filled eyes. "Perhaps I wanted to catch up with an old friend."

She curled her lip up in distaste at his response. "We are not _friends_, Pettigrew."

He shrugged. "So be it."

Petunia didn't know how to respond to this. Her mind struggled to find the right words to say but her mouth wouldn't cooperate. "I – what are you – after all these years – _now_? – but why – aren't you supposed to be – freak school – magic hats and rabbits and – Lily?"

Peter Pettigrew smirked at her. "Eloquent as always, my love. Take a walk with me?"

"I wouldn't go out with you if it was a choice between you and a giant squid!" she spluttered out defiantly. Internally, she congratulated herself – that was quite an impressively coherent insult, if she dared to say so herself.

He wore an oddly perplexed expression at her remark, though, and not one of offense like Petunia had hoped to elicit from him. "Is that a common Muggle saying?"

"No, why?"

He didn't reply.

"Petunia! Shut the door! You're letting the chilly autumn air in!" her mother yelled from inside the Evans' cottage.

"Tell her you're going down to the playground at Spinner's End," Peter instructed Petunia in a low hiss.

She furrowed her brow. Since when was shy meek little Peter Pettigrew so bossy? Nonetheless, she complied with his order. It was only when they were walking arm-in-arm down to the playground did she question his motives. "Are you going to kidnap me or something?"

"I bet you wouldn't mind if I did," he responded without really answering her question.

Silence fell between them, and Petunia took the time during the walk to study him. Something had changed in her ex-boyfriend. He used to be a stuttering mess of insecurity; now, he was cryptic and confidently vague. The last time she had seen Peter Pettigrew was when she was eighteen, so of course the five year age gap between then and now had altered him physically (he wasn't a little boy anymore; he was a _man_ now), but time seemed to have erased the endearing aspects of Peter's bumbling personality that she had once known like the back of her hand.

"Peter, what's going on."

"Shh, shh," he said with that secretive smile splayed across his face. "You'll find out in due time, darling."

Petunia didn't really like the sound of that. "No, tell me now."

He closed his eyes and used his right hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. Had she always been this difficult? "Don't ask questions you don't want to hear the answers to, love."

More focused on his hand, Petunia missed the words he had just uttered. "Peter! Your finger!"

"What? Oh." He quickly stuffed his disfigured hand into the right-hand pocket of his coat. "Frostbite," he explained the loss of his missing index finger.

They had now reached the edge of the playground. Petunia hated that he had chosen this spot – there were too many memories of Lily concentrated here. It had been a decade since she and Lily had had their fall-out but the residual jealousy towards her _fabulous, gorgeous, perfect_ younger sister still festered in Petunia.

"Did you have a nice Halloween?" she asked to alleviate some of the awkwardness between them. He had unlinked his arm from hers and was currently sliding down the silver metal corkscrew slide.

"Fair enough," he responded. There was a look of pure fascination on his face as he played on the Muggle playground.

Petunia, however, was getting quite annoyed. "Peter, why did you bring me here. I've got things to do today: a wedding to plan, groceries to buy, taxes to pay . . . I don't have time for such silly childish play."

He paused. "I wanted to know if you would teach me how to be a Muggle – I mean, normal." He dusted off his blue jeans and came to stand beside her. "I've recently realised that Dumbledore was just placating us; all of the so-called witches and wizards really _are_ freaks. You were right all along, love."

She preened at the compliment. But then her mind focused on his shifty posture and how he wouldn't make direct eye contact with her. "There's something else, isn't there, Peter. Another secret that you're not sharing with me."

He ran a hand through his mousy brown hair. "No, of course not." He fidgeted with the hem of his T-shirt and then blurted out: "Will you marry me?"

Petunia blinked, taken aback at his abrupt proposal. "Erm . . . Peter, I'm engaged to someone else."

"What? But you can't be. You promised, love. You said you would wait for me. Remember? You said that you would wait for me until the end of time." Peter's voice had taken on a growling possessive edge and it was scaring Petunia. "Call it off. Run away with me – elope or whatever."

"That was before I knew what you were – still are," she said, referring to his magical status. Lily and she never communicated much so Petunia had no idea that the kind lovely Peter Pettigrew who showed up the summer of 1976 at Spinner's End was the same Wormtail who attended Hogwarts with her sister. Petunia and him had a quiet summer romance until he was whisked away to boarding school in the autumn (he wisely kept his magical abilities to himself the whole time during their relationship, obviously knowing her prejudice against magical folk). They saw each other at breaks and were steady for awhile but his secret came tumbling out the next summer when that Snape boy saw them together and taunted Peter for hanging out with a _Muggle_. Petunia knew that awful Snape boy would have never said such a horrible thing if he was talking to a non-magical person, and Peter's true identity was revealed.

"But I want to become normal, Petunia. I want to be a Muggle for you."

She had the strangest sense that his words were honest but his motive was not. "No," she replied with finality. "I won't encourage this behaviour, Peter. I've found happiness, and I wish you the best and good luck in life. What we had was nice but you cannot spend every moment trying to relive the past."

Peter recoiled, his face twisting into a gruesome sneer as he dropped his pleasant façade. "You and your sister are so alike, you know that? You think I am stupid or something, a plaything to cast away when you are bored. But guess who got the last laugh, huh? She's _dead_ now and it's all her fault for swearing to me Unbreakable Vows she could never keep. She trusted me with her life which was pretty stupid of her when I know she never gave a rat's tail about mine."

"You _killed_ my sister?" Petunia whispered out hoarsely. Lily couldn't be dead. She was a freak of nature, invincible with her mutated magical genes.

"On Halloween night," he responded smugly. "Not me personally, per say, but I made sure she was vulnerable. It wasn't a hard feat considering how weak she already was – "

Petunia wanted him to shut up. God, she wanted him to stop talking and take back everything he had just said. She realised with a shiver of dread that his betrayal to Lily was what created the shift in his attitude and made him so much crueller and cynical than the boy she had meet by the creek five years ago.

" – and then, of course, I had to frame Sirius Black so everyone would believe that it wasn't I who betrayed the Potters, so I killed twelve other Muggles and severed off my finger and transformed into my rat Animagus –" Peter continued on boasting his cold-blooded achievements.

"Why would you think I would marry you, you monster?" she spat out in disgust.

His eyes glittered like black diamonds. "I was offering you redemption, Petunia, love. A second chance to change your fate. But it's too late now, and once the Dark Lord rises to power, he won't be as lenient with you as he was with Lily's death."

"Me? What does he want with me? I haven't done anything in your twisted magic world!"

"Wrong," he whispered. "You failed to grant his most loyal servant protection in the Muggle world in exchange for marriage." He reached into his coat sleeve and procured his wand.

Petunia blanched. "Oh my God. Oh my God. You're really going to kill me and break my bones and blast me to smithereens. Can't you just – oh, erase my memories or something? Pretend I never knew anything?"

"Where's the fun in that?" he smirked, turning his lion heart more and more Slytherin with each sarcastic remark. "But regrettably, I still love you, so I'll grant your last 'dying' wish." He cast the _Obliviate_ spell and watched as her eyes grew glassy and blank. Peter tampered with her memories until she forgot everything that had transpired between them except for a strong feeling of guilty regret and his last three words to her:

"You're next, sweetie."

[-]


End file.
